The much talked about Amazon.com/wine has launched!  As we reported earlier, the internet giant will “facilitate” sales of mostly small, family owned wineries in California, Washington, and Oregon.  That means that Amazon will offer the wines on its website but the wineries remain responsible for sales and shipping. Amazon has flexed its distribution muscles by negotiating lower shipping costs, and today buyers will pay $10 to ship up to 6 bottles to 12 states plus Washington DC.

But wait!  Wine.com, another internet leader in wine sales, has stepped into the ring.  They have added “Marketplace” to their website, where again small wineries that have been squeezed out of the three-tier system can market their wares.  The difference between Amazon and Wine.com is that the latter continues to handle all compliance, sales tax, warehousing, fulfillment, order tracking and customer service, as well as the expense of shipping the wine. Wineries will be responsible for delivering the wines to a licensed Wine.com storage facility.  Wine.com has always offered some of the lowest shipping costs in the online wine sales industry, so this could get interesting…

Bottom line is that as of today wine lovers have more choices, which is all good.  And remember that San Diego Wine Storage customers can have their wines shipped directly to either of our two San Diego County locations and we will sign for it, put the wine directly into their lockers or hold it for pickup.